Rita Felski

(1994)
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor
Literary Theory and Aesthetics, Feminist Theory, Modernity and Postmodernity, Cultural Studies
Editor, New Literary History

Degrees

Ph.D. Monash University, 1987
M.A. Monash University, 1982
B.A. Cambridge University, 1979

Interests

My current research centers on questions of method and interpretation. My recent manifesto "The Uses of Literature" is a neo-phenomenological investigation of aesthetic experiences such as recognition, enchantment, and shock. My work in progress is a book on critique and the hermeneutics of suspicion. I also have longstanding interests in feminist theory, modernity and postmodernity, genre (especially tragedy), and cultural studies.

Books

  • Comparison: Theories, Approaches, Uses,  co-editor, with Susan Stanford Friedman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
  • Uses of Literature (Blackwell's, 2008). Croatian translation forthcoming, Turkish translation, 2011.
  • Rethinking Tragedy, editor (Johns Hopkins, 2007).
  • Literature After Feminism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
  • Doing Time: Feminist Theory and Postmodern Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
  • The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). Korean translation, 1998.
  • Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Recent Special Issues of New Literary History

  • “Context?” (in preparation)
  • “Character,”  42, 2 (2011)
  • “What is an Avant-Garde? “41, 4 (2010)
  • “New Sociologies of Literature,”  41, 2 (2010)
  • “Tribute to Ralph Cohen,” 40, 4 (2009)

Recent Articles

  • “’Context Stinks’” New Literary History, forthcoming.
  • “Suspicious Minds, ” Poetics Today (2010).
  • "After Suspicion,” Profession (2009).
  • "Everyday Aesthetics," minnesota review, 71-72 (2009).
  • "Remember the Reader," The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 17 2008.
  • “From Literary Theory to Critical Method,” Profession, 2008, pp. 108-116.
  • “Cultural Studies,” The Routledge Social Science Encyclopedia, 2008.
  • “Tragic Women,” in Moderne Begreifen: Zur Paradoxie eines sozio-aesthetischen Deutungsmusters, ed. Christine Magerski et al  (Deutsche Universitätsverlag, 2007).
  • “Object Relations,” Contemporary Women’s Writing, 2007
  • “‘Because it is Beautiful’: New Feminist Perspectives on Beauty,” Feminist Theory, 7, 2 (2006)
  • "Redescriptions of Female Masochism," Minnesota Review, 2005.
  • "Modernist Studies and Cultural Studies," Modernism/Modernity, 2004.
  • "Introduction," New Literary History, special issue on tragedy, 2004.
  • "The Role of Aesthetics in Cultural Studies," Aesthetics and Cultural Studies, ed. Michael Bérubé, Blackwell's, 2004.
  • "Introduction," New Literary History, special issue on "Everyday Life," 2002.
  • "Afterword," Women and Modernity: Renegotiating the Public Sphere 1880-1930, ed. Ann Ardis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
  • "Telling Time in Feminist Theory," Tulsa Journal of Women's Studies, 21, 1 (2002): 21-27.
  • "Why Academics Don't Study the Lower Middle Class," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 25, 2002.
  • "Med Ratt Att Grata" (Tragic Women), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), March 21, 2001.
  • "Von der Postmoderne zur Moderne," (From the Postmodern to the Modern) Transit (Vienna), 19 (2000): 44-62.
  • "Feminist Futures," International Journal of Cultural Studies, 3 (2000): 238-245.
  • "Being Rational, Telling Stories," Feminist Theory, 2 (2000): 225-229.
  • "Nothing to Declare: Identity, Shame and the Lower Middle Class," PMLA, 115, 1 (2000): 1-25.
  • "The Invention of Everyday Life," New Formations, 39 (1999/2000), . 15-31.
  • "Why Those Who Dismiss Cultural Studies Don't Know What They're Talking About," The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23, 1999.
  • "Images of the Intellectual: From Philosophy to Cultural Studies," Continuum 12, 2 (1998): 157-171.
  • Introduction to Sexology and Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires, 1890-1940, ed. Lucy Bland and Laura Doan, University of Chicago Press and Polity Press, 1998.
  • "Feminist Aesthetics," in The International Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
  • "The Doxa of Difference," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23, 1 (Fall 1997): 1-23.
  • Judith Krantz, Author of 'The Cultural Logics of Late Capitalism'," Woman: A Cultural Review, vol 8, no. 2 (1997): 129-142.

Online Publications

Honors

  • Guggenheim Fellowship  2010
  • SW Brooks Visiting Lecturer in English, University of Queensland 2010
  • Harry Lyman Hooker Distinguished Professor, McMaster University 2005
  • Research Fellow, Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna 2000
  • George A. Miller Visiting Professor, University of Illinois, 1998
  • Australian Research Council Major Grant 1993
  • Fellowship, Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change, University of Virginia. 1991
  • Fellowship, Society for the Humanities, Cornell University 1989-1990
  • William Parker Riley Prize, best article in PMLA